3 cities, 3 sports vie for 2020 Olympics

Tokyo, Istanbul and Madrid still in running to host summer games; wrestling, squash, baseball hope to get in

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), listens to a reporters' question during a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2013. During the Sept. 4-10 meetings, IOC members will elect the host city for the Summer Olympics Games of 2020, with candidates being Madrid, Istanbul and Tokyo, as well as choose a new IOC president and add a sport to the 2020 program. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
— AP

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), listens to a reporters' question during a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2013. During the Sept. 4-10 meetings, IOC members will elect the host city for the Summer Olympics Games of 2020, with candidates being Madrid, Istanbul and Tokyo, as well as choose a new IOC president and add a sport to the 2020 program. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
/ AP

The International Olympic Committee gathers in Buenos Aires this week for its most significant election in decades, choosing a 2020 Summer Games host (today), an additional sport for the summer program (Sunday) and a new president to replace Jacques Rogge (Tuesday). Tokyo, wrestling and Thomas Bach are favored.

Which means none of that probably will happen.

The IOC is the bastion of princes and privilege, famously contrarian and unpredictable. Eight years ago, Paris entered the vote to select a 2012 Summer Olympics host as the clear favorite, and London won. Four years ago Chicago did and had the personal backing on the leader of the free world; and the 2016 Games are headed to Rio de Janeiro.

In February, the original Olympic sport of wrestling was kicked off the mat for 2020 with little discussion or warning, only for the IOC to reverse course a few months later and allow it to reapply. Now most insiders predict it will be reinstated.

Or maybe not. What happens if Tokyo indeed gets the Summer Games in Saturday’s vote, scheduled to be announced at 1 p.m. PDT? Do the 104 IOC members then restore baseball/softball because of its popularity in Asia at the expense of wrestling?

Baseball-softball
42% (237)

Squash
7% (37)

Wrestling
52% (295)

569 total votes.

And if Tokyo gets the nod, do the Asian dominoes continue to tumble with Singapore’s Ng Ser Miang upsetting Germany’s Bach as president? Or does Bach or another European candidate become an attractive counterbalance to Asia?

It makes for a wild four days of politicking at the Buenos Aires Hilton, with IOC members whispering to each other in the lobby while others are cutting deals 20 stories above them in lavish suites. Proof that anything can happen: The next two Winter Olympics are in Sochi, Russia, and PyeongChang, South Korea.

Oh, and it’s secret ballot.

The race for 2020 started with six candidates and has been pared to three: Tokyo, Istanbul and Madrid. None is particularly awful, or attractive.

Tokyo has solid finances and the famed Japanese organizational prowess. But it already hosted a Summer Games in 1964, and the 2018 Winter Games are in South Korea. And a crippled nuclear power plant 140 miles to the north is leaking radioactive water.

Istanbul exudes the Olympic ideal of universality by straddling Europe and Asia, and it would be the first nation with a Muslim majority to host a Games. But it borders Syria and Iraq, and as recently as July riot police were firing tear gas in Taksim Square to dispel anti-government protesters. A few days later, 30 Turkish track athletes were implicated in a widespread doping scandal.

Madrid is bidding for the third straight time and is proposing a bare-bones plan that requires only 20 percent of venues to be built new. It also has 27-percent unemployment (56 percent for those under 25) and earlier this year let off one of sport’s most notorious doping doctors without prison time.

In the end, though, it may be less a referendum on the merits of the three finalists than the shortcomings of their predecessors. A choice between idealism and realism.

The vote comes in an era when major sporting events are increasingly headed to non-traditional locales – a World Cup in South Africa, a Summer Olympics in Brazil, a European Championships of soccer co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine – with mixed results. The predictable construction delays and organizational headaches may curb the IOC’s ambition and blow it to a safe harbor, which is exactly what Tokyo’s bid is pushing.

Robert Livingstone of GamesBids.com produces a numerical ratings index for bids, and his latest figures still have Tokyo as the favorite with 62.14 points. But the margin over Istanbul (61.45) and Madrid (58.76) is narrowing.

Livingstone calls it “one of the most competitive Olympic bid races in years with no clear winner or outsider.”

So, too, is the vote for Rogge’s replacement after a 12-year tenure. There are six candidates, including the favored Bach of Germany, Ng from Singapore, IOC veteran Denis Oswald of Switzerland and former Soviet pole vaulter Sergei Bubka.

That decision, more than the Europe-Asia battle for 2020 host, could have the biggest impact on a proposed U.S. bid for the 2024 Summer Games. The IOC has taken a noticeably anti-American slant over the last decade, with few Americans on IOC committees and the stinging loss of Chicago to Rio for 2016.

Relations seems to be thawing, and Bach is viewed as an ally. After the U.S. Olympic Committee and IOC settled on a new revenue-sharing agreement last year, Bach, an IOC vice president, was seen approaching USOC chairman Larry Probst and proclaiming, “Hello, partner.”

Then again, the most recent IOC vote was in July, for host of the 2018 World Youth Games. Medellin, Colombia, and Glasgow, Scotland, were considered the favorites. Buenos Aires was relegated to long shot after the IOC evaluation report was released and its bid was roundly criticized.